


More than Expected

by distractionpie



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dogs, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 17:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8294188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: In which Joe Toye looks for his dog and finds more than expected.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For @ciarlapanics on Tumblr who contributes such wonderful art to this fandom and mentioned wanting more LuzToye as a birthday gift.
> 
> This was just going to be a quick bit of fluff after I picked ‘Found their dog’ of my list of AUs and then suddenly I had a thousand words of rambling backstory for why Joe even had a dog????????? Sorry, sometimes the words get away from me a little.
> 
> Warnings: Past animal cruelty, referenced animal death.

It had all begun with his job really. Joe Toye was, by nature, a selectively social person - he liked company well enough but he picked that company carefully, but although working as a personal trainer left him with some freedom to choose his clients, sometimes he had to take on people he'd rather not have much to do with in order to ensure that his bills got paid.

Sobel had been one of those clients.

Joe had been considering dropping him or passing him off to another trainer anyway, the guy talked a big game but then utterly failed to put the work in and blamed it on Joe when he didn't get results, and there were few things worse in a client. That was kind of the reason Joe had put up with the guy as long as he had - everybody knew Sobel was a dick and there was nobody foolish enough to agree to take him off Joe's hands.

And Sobel liked to brag, especially about things that he had no reason to be proud of since they were usually won off the successes of others rather than his own talent. On that particular occasion he'd been bragging about money, and how he'd won big betting on dogs.

"Racing?" Joe had asked, idly. He didn't really care about Sobel's money or how he'd got it, but the crowd Joe ran with meant he knew a fair few gamblers, he was pretty sure one of them would have mentioned if there was a dog track in town.

"Fighting," Sobel corrected. A smart man wouldn't have confessed to such a crime so casually, and even a foolish one would have attempted to retract the words or redirect the conversation at the way Joe stiffened and scowled, but Sobel was beyond foolish. "There was a pit running out of the back rooms at Evans', it's easy money really, half the dogs were mongrels. It's a shame they're moving on so quickly."

Sometimes Joe regretted not having taken the opportunity to knock a few of Sobel's teeth out, but instead he's stepped outside and made a call.

Joe had met Detective Ronald Speirs during a spate of arson attacks, back when Speirs had been a lowly deputy and Joe had still been a firefighter and had both legs, and while most of the fire department had been unnerved by Speirs, Joe had a grudging respect for his efficiency. Technically a dog fighting ring was outside of Speirs purview as a homicide investigator, and he ought to hand it off to somebody from whatever department specialised in that sort of thing, but Joe knew that Speirs would be unlikely to brush off anything Joe brought to him directly.

"Toye, don't spook them into running," Speirs had ordered, after agreeing to lead a raid on the place. Not stay out of it, not leave it to the professionals, just don't rush in and scare them off before Speirs could get them in handcuffs. Joe had known he was right to keep in contact with the guy.

It had taken Joe ten minutes to get to the bar and Speirs arrived with the cavalry another ten minutes later. By that point Joe has knocked the teeth out of two guys and has a split lip bleeding sluggishly.

Most of the place had already been packed up, the crates in the bar’s backroom emptied, Sobel's slip too late to shut the place down, but Joe felt reassured by the darkness in Speirs' eyes as he assured Joe that the guys they'd arrested would give up the location of the others under interrogation.

There were six dogs left, all caged and wounded, four that growled when anyone got too close, one that cowered, and one that lay limp in its cage. One of the corporals under Speirs command had pulled a face and offered to radio animal control. "They'll need putting down."

It seemed wrong to Joe to kill a dog just because it had been raised cruelly, but he wasn't certain what other options there were until Speirs shook his head and said, "I already made a call on our way over. Take this scum to the station, I can handle things from here."

The young corporal had looked relieved and scarpered, leaving Joe and Speirs alone with dogs. Joe had been tempted to try and assist them but when he approached the cages Speirs shook his head and Joe found himself unwilling to push the limits of Speirs’ generosity after already asking one favour of him that day.

Ultimately Speirs call turned out to be to a vet whom he described as an acquaintance but whom was the only person Joe had even seen call Speirs Ron. The vet, who had introduced himself to Joe as Carwood, had looked over the dogs with a sad eye and said that there was little hope for them, but he would do his best for them. He’d loaded them to his van and offered to keep Joe appraised of their fates. Joe wasn’t sure what had given Carwood the impression that he’d be interested in that, he’d only come along because it was the decent thing to do.

Ultimately only three of the dogs were restored to health, as Carwood explained to Joe over the phone a few weeks later, and one of them Carwood felt was too aggressive to leave the clinic, but even the better two would be hard to home, one skittish and the other temperamental. Speirs had already offered to home one, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to rehabilitate two ex-fighting dogs together, and Joe had surprised himself by offering to take one.

It had been two weeks before Carwood had claimed the dogs were healthy enough to leave his surgery, and Joe had driven up with trepidation. It wasn’t that he’d regretted the decision, but he’d read up on dog training since making the offer, and had started to realise that he was going to need to put a lot of work in.

He’d arrived at the clinic, small and clean and neat, and been greeted by a chipper girl in neon scrubs who’d told him that Carwood was just cleaning up after a surgery but Joe was welcome to go on through to the kennels instead of waiting.

It had been easy to pick out the two ex-fighting dogs, they were no longer mangy and bloodied, but the scars were still clear to see. Joe guessed the one that was curled up in the corner of its cage was the same one that had cowered in the back of the bar. The other one growled when he entered. He remembered what Carwood had said over the phone, that one of the dogs was still having trust issues and while there was hope for it to be rehabilitated it would likely never be an especially trusting or friendly dog. Joe had always thought dogs were too trusting and too loyal though, had never understood why a kicked pet would come back to its owner, or why an animal would show its throat to someone untrustworthy.

If Speirs hadn’t already laid claim to a particular dog, Joe decided he was going to pick the disagreeable one.

He was pretty sure his friends would say it suited him.

***

_1 year later._

As soon as he gets to the door he knows that something is wrong. Boxer doesn't go crazy with barking when he gets to the door like she does when anybody else so much as steps onto the driveway, but she's always waiting for him. Today when he lets himself in the house is empty and silent. He calls out, wondering if she hadn't noticed his approach, or had somehow shut herself in one of the room, but there's no response, and the sense of wrongness curdles into dread. He checks each room of the house, and then opens the door to look into the yard.

"Fuck!"

One corner of his back fence is in splinters, opening his yard up to the road and the neighbourhood behind.

He has the sudden sinking feeling he knows exactly where Boxer has gone.

The hole in the fence also opens up his neighbour’s garden and Joe crosses the boundaries and walks up the yard to bang on the door.

As soon as the guys opens up Joe snaps, "What the fuck happened to my fence?"

"Yeah, haha it's a funny story, I totally thought my mover was in reverse-"

Joe scowls. "You ran down my fucking fence?" What kind of idiot doesn't check if they're in forward or reverse gear?

"Uh, yeah, sorry man," the moron still looks like he finds the whole thing funny, although the amusement fades from his face as Joe closes the distance between them. "Hey - it was an honest mistake, buddy. I totally busted up the front of my mower too-"

"I'm not your buddy and I don't give a shit about your mower," Joe snaps. "Did you see my dog get out, asshole?"

The guy grimaces and takes a half step back. "Man, he was barking like crazy, it was some scary shit. I thought about tryna stop it, but then, like, pitbulls are super dangerous and aggressive and I didn't want to be mauled. I was thinking about calling animal control-"

Joe curls one hand into a fist. "When?" If his girl's been hurt because this ignorant fuck reported her as a dangerous dog, then Joe won't feel any guilt about making sure this idiot suffers for it.

"My cell was flat," the guys says, "And who has a house phone these days, a waste of fuckin' money, yeah?"

"When did you call?" Joe repeats.

"I hadn't got 'round to it yet," the guys says with a shrug. "I put my phone on to charge but then I started watching this freaky ass movie about some aliens who-"

"Don't care," Joe says sharply. "And you don't need to call. I'll deal with it." Animal control would see a scarred up pitbull and assume the worst - even if they didn't hurt her in the process of bringing her in, they likely assume she was still a fighting down and put her without even bothering to check for an owner.

He leaves his idiotic neighbour stammering in the doorway and returns to his own yard.

First things first, if he's lucky, she mightn't have gone too far - he goes back into the house for his jacket and a bag of dog treats, then sets out to scour the area. He might look like a fool walking up and down the street and calling out to a dog that isn't there, but he also doesn't really give a damn what most people in the neighbourhood think.

A few stop to ask what he's doing, there's a young woman with a stroller who offers him coo-ing sympathy over the thought of his poor lost puppy right up until he says the word pitbull - then she visibly recoils, grip tightening on the stroller and eyes darting from side to side as if expecting a rabid stray to leap out at her. The fear only deepens Joe's unease, it seems all too likely that she could be hurt by somebody acting out of fear, and even though he wishes he could ignore it, Joe also have to acknowledge the possibility that Boxer could lash out and hurt somebody - even the most placid and docile dogs could be dangerous if sufficiently provoked, and Boxer was unfriendly to strangers and other dogs even under normal circumstances. After that Joe doesn't mention her breed to the people he speaks with, just gives a rough description.

It's nearly dark when he spots a familiar collar hanging from a branch of a hedge in a park about three miles from his house that he'd thought might be a likely place for her to run to because he walked her there sometimes. It looks like the collar has been caught on the branch and pulled loose, rather than unfastened by a person, which means it's more likely come off accidentally than been removed by a potential thief. But it also means that if somebody finds her they'll have no way of identifying her or knowing that she's a pet not a stray. He's been holding off on getting her chipped for a while now, he knew he ought to but he'd worried that subjecting her to a painful treatment would set back the progress he'd made with her.

Once darkness truly sets in, he knows he needs to give up. This isn’t an efficient method of searching, and he’s still going to have to get up and go to work in the morning – his colleagues might be forgiven time off for a partner or a relative, but the same kindness wouldn’t be extended to a pet, even if Joe often thought he liked the dog better than any of the humans he knew.

***

He rises early the next morning, and experiences a sickening moment of disorientation when he doesn’t feel the warm lump of fur curled up by his side where Boxer has abandoned her basket and jumped up onto the bed with him in the night. It had taken her months to grow that comfortable with him, and at first he’d been tempted to train her out of the habit, since some of the books he’d read had suggested that sort of thing encouraged behavioural issues. When he’d mentioned it to Carwood a few weeks later, during one of Boxer’s scheduled check-ups, Carwood had smiled a little guiltily and said unless having a dog in the bed was causing practical issues then he saw it as a matter of personal preference. Since having met the man, Joe had come to discover that Carwood owned a veritable menagerie of pets, taking pity on all sorts of bedraggled and unwanted animals and he’d then found himself wondering just how many of those animals found their way onto Carwood’s sheets. It was quite strange to think of how fast waking up to another warm body had become routine again after so long sleeping alone – although the fur had taken some getting used to.

He’s up early enough that he’s got time to boot up his computer as he eats his breakfast, and to open up a word document and type ‘LOST DOG’ in bold letters across the top. He doesn’t have any good pictures to add to it, he’s not the sort of person to try and pose his dog in sweaters or any ridiculous shit like that and given her scars he’s not sure a picture might not just spark alarm, eventually he picks one off his phone that he’d taken to send to his mother. It’s a little blurry and Boxer’s head is turned away from the camera, hiding most of the scars but still leaving her recognisable. He tacks on a rough description, then adds his phone number. After a moment's hesitation he types the word reward across the bottom - it might attract scammers, but if there's a chance financial incentive might help that's a risk he's willing to take. He prints a few dozen copies, enough to stick up all along his route to work and to put a few up around the gym, with enough left over that he can give a few out to friends and ask them to put copies up in their own neighbourhoods.

He gets through the day focused on thinking about where best to place his posters, and the next few thinking about where his friends might place posters. Bill suggests trying the internet, and Joe spends several hours joining various local facebook groups and lost dog websites. Carwood assures him that he’s passed on Boxer’s description to all of the other local veterinarians he knows, and Speirs sends him a brief text saying he’s passed the same description on to animal control with a high priority flag, so if they find or even hear anything, they’ll pass that information straight to Speirs and there’s no risk of the dog being destroyed without them going through Speirs first.

A week passes and there are no calls. After another week he stops expecting any.

There’s no decent statistics for the likelihood of a missing pet returning or being found within a certain timeframe, but Joe knows how quickly the odds drop for humans and he can’t imagine they’re any better for dogs.

His friends have fallen on an even split between false hope that she still might turn up okay or the ‘hey man, hard luck, but you can always get another dog’ approach, and he’s not sure which pisses him off more. There's no way she could still be safe after being stray for so long, but he's honestly feeling a little fucked up about it.

There’s nothing he can do but grit his teeth and get on with it though.

He's at work, a month later, when his mobile rings, his caller ID flashing up a number isn't a contact of his, nor one he recognises, and he feels a dim flicker of hope. Joe knows how to keep his number out of telemarketing lists and he doesn't make a habit of giving it out to people without getting a number from them in return, the only way he could imagine somebody he didn't know getting hold of it was from the posters all across town. It could be a prank call, or bad news, but he still feels a faint spark of hope as he swipes to accept the call. It’s stupid maybe, to still be holding on to the idea of Boxer’s return after so long, definitely more sentimental that Joe had thought himself capable of, but here he is.

"Hello?"

"This Joe Toye?" says an unfamiliar male voice.

"Yeah," Joe says, every part of him wants to ask if this is about Boxer, but the words don't seem to come out.

"I think I've had your dog living with me for the past few weeks," the guy says. "Found her wandering around in an alley on my way home from work, she was tryna eat a pigeon and honestly the birds in round here are all polluted and weird, so I got her some ham instead and brought her home. She didn't have a collar, and a pal of mine who's dating a vet got hold of one of those chip scanners but we couldn't find anything. But then yesterday a buddy of mine was across town meeting his boyfriend, and he saw a lost dog flyer in a store and recognised the picture."

Joe sits down at the desk, his stomach in knots. Relief is flooding his veins at the thought that Boxer is somehow, miraculously safe, but at the same time he can't help but be suspicious of the kind of guy who would hold onto a temperamental ex-fighting dog for over a month, and what the hell this guy and his pal had done to Joe's girl in order to get close enough to her to scan her for a chip – she still barely allowed Bill, who was in Joe’s house at least twice a week, to stroke her, let alone total strangers.

“I’m at work now but I can come get her in an hour once my shift is finished,” Joe says.

“An hour? Wow… uh sure, no rush, just come along whenever this afternoon,” the guy says, sounding bafflingly surprised at the thought that Joe might want his dog back promptly.

“Where should I get her?”

The guy rattles off an address and Joe cusses in shock even as he's scrawling the house number down on a post-it. It's all the way across town, further than he'd ever figured she would go, way outside of any familiar territory from where he walked her or even the broader area he'd flyered. It's one hell of a stroke of luck that this guy's buddy was all the way over the river and spotted one of Joe's flyers.

"You gotta name?" Joe asks, clicking his pen.

"Oh shit, sure. Damn, guess I shoulda opened with that, but I figured you would be more interested in your dog." Well, at least the guy has got some brains, Joe honestly couldn't give a shit about this guy, except that he needs a name to attach to this number in his phone just in case has a problem finding the address. "George Luz, you'll need that to get in actually, my place is above a bar, Malarkey's, it's easy to find the place. Just go around the side, and look for my name on the buzzer.”

“Luz. Got it,” Joe says, then repeats the address back to confirm it. “See you in an hour.”

***

The bar is easy enough to find. There are a few parking spaces out front, probably for patrons, but it's still early enough in the day that they're unoccupied. He pulls up and looks at the bar, which looks like more of dive than even Joe's usual haunts. Not the kind of place he'd want to live above, and a dog like Boxer really needed access to a yard not to be shut in an apartment all day, but at least he was getting her back.

He finds the door pretty easy, and as he was told there's a row of buzzers - the second top one has a piece of paper taped over it on which 'George Luz!' is scrawled in messy handwriting. The exclamation point doesn't fill him with confidence.

He presses the button, holds it down a little longer than is polite, and a few moments later he can hear the thud of hasty footsteps and the door swings open.

The guys that opens it is around Joe’s height, scruffy, and looking way too cheerful to be greeting a stranger.

“Wow, you meant it about in an hour,” he says with a laugh. “Bang on the minute, damn.”

“You Luz?” Joe checks and the guy nods. “Joe Toye. You have my dog?”

“Hi, yeah, I kept her in my apartment, on account of I didn’t want her running out into the street when she saw you, you wanna follow me up?”

He’s already stepping back from the doorway as he says it so Joe nods and lets Luz lead him up to the apartment. There's barking as they approach. "Jeez," Luz says, "I bet she can smell you from here, dogs can do that can't they?"

"Yeah, she's a decent tracker." Joe can hear the sound of claws scratching at the door and he hopes this guy isn't going to turn around and present him with a bill for damages to his home - he could afford it, he'd just really rather not.

"She usually like this? Jumping at the door?" Luz asks. "Every time I come in I have to be real careful not to hit her with the door, ‘cause she's bouncing around so much."

When Joe had first got her she'd been too skittish to approach him, had claimed a corner of his kitchen and growled every time he encroached upon it, and while these days she usually met him at the door he'd trained her not to jump at him. The jumping worries him, makes him think that she's desperate to get away, but he finds that he buys Luz's claims to have been trying to not hurt her. Now Joe's met the guy he feels pretty confident in saying that Luz doesn't strike him as the type of guy who'd be deliberately cruel to animals, that just doesn't fit with taking in a stray dog for weeks, or with being happy to return her (unless the extortion is simply yet to come), but Joe also knows all of the ways that well-meaning people can mistreat animals by not knowing how to care for them right. He's not going to be happy until he's got Boxer back home.

"Alright, you got her if she tries to run out?" Luz asks and Joe nods.

Luz turns the handle, and the barking gets more frantic as he eases the door open until finally the gap is wide enough for Boxer to slip out.

She rushes right to Joe, darting around his legs and yapping, and even though his leg makes it a bitch, Joe drops to one knee to pet her. For all of his fears, she looks okay - looks better than okay, her coat is glossy and her eyes are bright and clear. She's wagging her tail like crazy.

For a moment Joe's eyes feel a little moist.

He spends a moment fussing over her, then looks back up at Luz, who is watching them with a look of amusement. On another day Joe might have scowled at being watched like some sort of show, but he's in a forgiving mood. "Thanks for taking care of her," he says instead.

For a moment Luz's smile droops a little, but it snaps back fast as he says, "No worries. She's a great dog," which can only be a polite fiction, because Joe loves her and still thinks she's a massive pain in the ass sometimes, "Uh, do you want a drink or anything before you split?"

Joe raises an eyebrow. He's got what he came for, and there's really no need to keep hanging about. If Luz is chasing the reward Joe would rather he just come out and ask, but he nods anyway, "Sure. C'mon girl."

"Coke good?" Luz asks, leading the way inside.

Joe steps inside, the apartment door opens immediately into a combined kitchen and living area, a little cluttered and messy but not dirty, with a few doors off it that Joe assumes lead to a bedroom and bathroom.

"Take a seat," Luz says, waving to the mismatched sofa and armchairs in the centre of the room, before opening up the fridge.

Joe settles into one of the armchairs, a chintzy monstrosity that looks like a second-hand shop reject and is so soft that it almost swallows him, Boxer settling at his feet.

Luz comes back, handing Joe the coke still in its can, no glass, and then flops onto the sofa with his own drink.

Immediately Boxer rises, and in a move too quick for Joe to stop, she's leapt up onto the couch and half across Luz's lap, nearly sending the open can flying.

Joe tenses, waiting for the yelling to start, for Luz to push Boxer off and complain, but that doesn't happen.

Instead Luz grins, balancing his drink on the arm of the sofa and scratching behind her ears with one hand. "Getting the most of the last of my attention are you, gorgeous girl?" he croons, the hand that's not scratching her stroking down her back.

Boxer sprawls across his lap, tail wagging and tongue lolling out, the image of canine bliss, and Joe sits, flabbergasted.

Were she less distinctive looking, Joe would assume that there had been some sort of mix up, that Luz had just found a similar looking dog but with a very different personality from Joe's girl. There's no mistaking those scars though.

"She's usually not friendly with new people," Joe comments, and George nods.

"Yeah, it took her a day or two to really settle down," he says, and Joe wants to say that the period for new people to become trusted is usually months, but George's attention is back on Boxer, "Kept pacing, didn't you beautiful? But once I got her something to chew on, she was a real sweetheart." George frowns then. "Damn, I've got a crap ton of dog stuff now, and no dog to go with it. That's gonna look weird... you want me to pack up the shit I got for her? Since it looks like I'm not going to have much use for half a case of dog food now."

Joe nods, it makes sense, and Boxer whines a little as George eases himself out from under her, but he leans down and pets her hair soothingly. "Gotta get you ready to go home, darling," he explains. "I've got a couple amazon boxes in my bedroom, those'll probably be easiest for you to get everything into your car."

Joe isn't sure how much dog stuff George could possibly have acquired in a month, but he nods.

Boxer looks dejected as he leaves the room, and Joe pulls a face at her. "What the hell?" he mutters.

There's some clattering from the bedroom, then a harsh bang that makes Boxer's ears prick up until George hollers that he's fine. A moment later he returns, with a large box under each arm. One he sets down and the other he carries into the kitchen, where he pulls out a case of tins and then several bags of very dog treats. When Joe shifts and cranes his neck he can see that the box George set down contains a luxurious looking dog bed and a whole stack of toys.

“Feel free to dump the stuff you don't want," Luz calls out, "I probably went a bit overboard, but you have an awesome dog,” and this time Joe believes it. Somebody told him once that the best way to tell if somebody's smile was sincere was to see if they were also smiling with their eyes, but this is the first time Joe has seen somebody's smile take over their whole body. He's not sure how Boxer has managed to get the guy so thoroughly charmed, but there's something in George's open, easy demeanour that makes it suddenly less hard to see how he might have earned Boxer's trust.

"You really like her," Joe observes, a little redundantly, but George laughs.

"You got that?" he says, “Don't get me wrong, man, I’m glad for you that you’re getting your dog back and all, but she’s been fun to have around and I’m gonna miss her, y'know?”

He glances over his shoulder at them, and Joe can see that he means it. A few weeks is plenty of time to get attached to an animal, that's not so strange, more surprising is the sense Joe has that Boxer might well pine for George when he takes her away.

"Well, her weekday walks are kind of irregular, but I take her to Riverside park every Saturday, do you know it?" Joe finds himself saying. "Usually get there around 8:30, and let her stretch her legs for at least an hour, she's usually so wound by the squirrels, I don't think she'd be real picky about who's holding the leash."

It's not a fantastic offer, most of the people Joe knows would balk at the thought of doing anything before ten on a weekend, but when George says, "Riverside? Yeah, I know Riverside. It’s a date," he sounds almost eager.

***

George had said date in a casual sort of way, and Joe knew he probably only meant in the way that some people used it as a word for any planned meeting. But it was too late, the word had already implanted itself in his mind. It had been a while since Joe had bothered with dating, going out and meeting people meant putting in a lot of effort in pursuit of something that was fairly far down his list of priorities, and eventually he’d managed to convince even his mother to stop trying to set him up and to trust that if he were meant to find somebody, he would find them. And now Boxer had gone and found him someone who’d seemed unfazed by his abrupt manner, had doted upon his frightening pet, and smiled at them both like the first time the sun shone after a long winter.

So yeah, it didn’t mean anything, but it also couldn’t hurt any for Joe to scrub up a bit and see if he couldn’t make something out of the opportunity presenting itself.

It wasn't like what he was wearing was exceptionally fancy, just a t-shirt that was a little tighter and a little less worn than his normal fare and some jeans that fitted closer than his usual choice of sweats. He'd considered using some of the weird hair goop Fran had given him for Christmas, but he wasn't actually sure what to do with it, and there was such a thing as trying to hard anyway.

He’s gets to the park around eight fifteen and gets Boxer’s leash on her, before taking her for a lap around the parking lot. He’s not sure if George plans to arrive at eight thirty precisely, or just drop in on them at some point during the hour’s walk, but he figures he’ll hang around within sight of the parking area until around eight thirty-five, and if George isn’t there by then he can come find Joe, the park isn’t that big after all.

At eight twenty-five a battered looking blue car puts in, and George climbs out of it. He’s dressed similarly to last time Joe saw him, jeans and a rumpled hoodie and he waves to them as he approaches.

“Hello gorgeous,” he says, crouching in front of Joe, and Joe’s stomach flips embarrassingly while George fusses over Boxer a little before straightening and tacking on a quick, “Hi Joe.”

He runs a hand through hair, and if it’s a habit then it would certainly explain how it got to be so voluminous. He still seems a little sleepy, looking out at Joe from heavy lidded eyes.

“Early for you?” Joe asks.

George shrugs, “A little. But it’s good to be out this early, before all of the traffic really starts kicking up.”

“You a bad driver?” Joe asks, glancing over at the car. It’s maybe a little rude, but the car really is a practical wreck, and it makes Joe glad he went to fetch Boxer from George’s place instead of asking George to drive her to him.

Instead of being insulted, George laughs. “I’ve taught three of my younger sisters and two of my brothers to drive in that thing,” he shares, “My littlest sister, Louise, is nearly old enough now, but I’m trying to convince one of the others to take on the job because I’m pretty sure if that thing takes any more amateur manoeuvring it’s just gonna fall apart around my ears.”

“Six siblings?” Joe says in surprise.

“Nine,” George corrects, “I got my apartment cheap, on account of Malarkey’s family had been trying to rent it out for months but everyone kept turning it down because of the noise from the bar, but honestly, after the house I grew up in, bar noise is nothing.”

“Shit,” Joe had occasionally wondered if he wouldn’t have benefited from a couple of siblings who could serve to distract his mother from worrying about his life but nine sounded like something from a nightmare.

George shrugs and cracks a joke about the chaos that would occur if all his siblings ended up in the bar, which reminds Joe of Bill’s bachelor party and the chaos that was the entire Guarnere and Heffron clans, plus their whole firehouse shift, attempting a bar crawl. George thinks it’s hysterical. The conversation flows easily, as Joe leads George around his usual figure of eight lap of the park, though George keeps getting distracted and losing track of his point whenever Boxer does anything he deems cute, and he seems to find her whole existence cute.  Several times Boxer does something ridiculous and then looks over at George as if expecting a rewards. “Sorry sweetheart,” George says, the first time she does it, patting at his pockets, “No treats this time.” If he’s really been giving her treats for every antic she pulls, then Joe is surprised he didn’t get her back five pounds heavier.

Having somebody to talk to slows the pace of the walk, and Joe finds that it’s coming up on ten as they drift back in the direction of the parking lot. Walking in solitude has never bothered Joe, but he can’t deny he’s enjoyed the company, and he’s trying to decide if it would be strange to ask George to come for another walk next week when Boxer barks suddenly, darting off to the side. In his distraction he hasn't been keeping as tight control over her as he usually does, and he's knocked off balance as she loops around first his own feet, then George's, chasing something he can't see.

"Boxer, heel," he commands, and she runs back towards him. He realises a moment too late that her leash isn't long enough to permit the movement, but before he can try to countermand the order, the cord is drawn tight and he topples, George crashing down with him.

Joe had his share of falling on his ass when he was going through physical therapy, and there are few things that pissed him off more than the embarrassment of ending up on the ground in public and the way it made people stay at him with open pity and whisper comments about his leg.

Only this time he hasn't hit cold, hard concrete, he's landed on top of Luz's solid warmth, and they're close enough that Joe can feel George's breath mingling with his own, and the rise and fall of his chest where they're pressed together, as George says,

"Man, have I mentioned that I love your dog?"

There's no pity on George's face, just inches away from his own. Instead, Luz is grinning.

Joe can feel himself smile as he says, "Several times."

Georges grin deepens as Joe closes the distance between them, and then Joe shuts his eyes and concentrates on kissing him.

It isn’t a particularly good kiss, Joe doesn't think he's ever kissed anyone who has been manically beaming at the same time before and it turns out that makes things kind of awkward at first, but then George seems to pull himself together, his chapped lips pressing back eagerly, even if he does bump his nose against Joe's in the process.

Boxer's barking reminds him of where they are and he pulls back. For a moment they just stare at each other, but then George's mouth curls into a mischievous smirk that Joe can't help but once again mirror.

There’s a little inelegant fumbling as they get their legs out of the tangle of the leash, but then George is back on his feet and wrapping his warm, rough hand around Joe’s to help him up, and when they’re both standing he doesn’t let go.

“Hey, this is your end of town so you probably know it already, but there’s this really great ice-cream place near here,” George says, “And it’s dog friendly. Wanna get some?”

In fact, Joe hadn’t known, doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth and would normally balk at the idea of eating ice-cream in the middle of the morning, especially anywhere in public where he could run into one of his clients.

Right now though, ice-cream sounds great.

“When you say dog friendly, do you mean let’s dogs in, or do you mean I’m about to find out that ice-cream for dogs is a thing?”

George’s eyed widen, “Shit, ice-cream for dogs. I didn’t even think about that. I don’t know, but now I’ve gotta find out. You in?”

“I’m in.”


End file.
